Recent research shows that new types of high-skilled administrators, what we in this article label organisational professionals, have amplified their presence in public sector organisations in relation to other types of public sector employees. Our purpose is to analyse how organisational accountability can be seen as a driver behind the expansion of organisational professionals. Intensified political and administrative pressures seem to be driving this process, but there also seems to be internal turfs in which the different parts of the government administration seek to hold each other accountable, a process possibly amplified by professionalising ambitions of the organisational professionals. The article concludes that the bureaucratising effect of accountability demands ought to be highlighted more in critical research of accountability. The study is based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with public sector professionals in Sweden from different policy sectors and government levels.

There is a growing academic interest in the paradox that while public sector reform-makers are aiming to reduce bureaucratic layers we are witnessing new forms of bureaucratization. This extant body of literature has so far tended to focus on red-tape (Bozeman & Feeney, 2007) and administrative intensity (Andrews et al. 2017). This paper takes an alternative approach to bureaucratization by investigating the relationship between public sector reforms and the increase of new types of ‘bureaucrats’ within public organizations. We apply the concept of organizational professionals to define a special category of professional administrators with managerial, corporate or strategic functions in organisational communication, human relations, project management, quality assurance, sustainability, inclusiveness, equity etc.

Hitherto, the growth in numbers and status of organizational professionals has been seen in the literature as the outcome of New Public Management-inspired reforms and/or the ‘professionalizing’ aspirations of occupational groups themselves (Nordengraaf et al., 2014). We contend that a focus on NPM is too narrow when it comes to understanding the drivers of bureaucratization. Following Halligan (2020) it seems like managerialism is only one part of the storyline, while politicization of the public sector has been equally significant. What seems to unite these three elements (managerialisation, professionalisation and politicization) is the emphasis on accountability. Based on Bovens (2007) we separate between five different accountability relationships mentioned by our respondents: political, legal, professional, social, and administrative.

Based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with organizational professionals working in various parts of the public sector in Sweden, and applying an interpretive methodological approach, we ask in this paper how those organisational professionals perceive changing professional roles and the chains of accountability. While the increase in organizational professionals is conceived as an organizational response to external demands for accountability, our empirical data also suggests that the organisational professional groups are responding to internal demands for enhancing accountability mechanisms (as well as themselves generating such demands). The organizational professionals themselves describe this as a tension between supporting and steering, On the one hand they describe their role as hiving off administrative chore from managers and core service professionals, and on the other hand, assuring that the same actors adhere to the policies and guidelines they themselves have created. Our results suggest that a broad discourse of accountability in public organisations serve to justify an increase in organisational professional staff.

Resultatet av politiska beslut påverkas i stor utsträckning av vad som sker i den offentliga förvaltningen. Att studera hur förvaltningen styrs och hur den fungerar är därför helt centralt inom samhällsvetenskaperna. För att analysera den offentliga förvaltningens komplexitet och mångfald behövs ett brett spektrum av teorier, men beroende på vilken teori som används kommer både frågeställningar och svar att variera. Syftet med denna bok är att förmedla kunskap om och inspirera till reflektion över teorier och hur de kan användas i vetenskapliga undersökningar. I boken presenteras olika teoretiska ingångar till studiet av den offentliga förvaltningen. Uppsatsförfattare får exempel på hur en vetenskaplig studie kan läggas upp, olika teoriers styrkor och svagheter samt förslag på hur fallgropar kan undvikas. Perspektiv på offentlig förvaltning riktar sig till studenter och lärare inom offentlig förvaltning.

One recurrent narrative in the discussion about managerial public sector reforms is the growth in organizational professionals as a response to new accountability regimes. New Zealand has experienced modest growth rates in the general public sector workforce. Less studied, though, is whether the composition of the public sector workforce has changed, with an increase in organizational functions supportive to management. Based on descriptive workforce data, followed by follow-up interviews, this article presents a multifaceted and complex picture of a growing new public bureaucracy with the main task of managing chains of accountability. © The Author(s) 2021.

In recent years, neuroscientific knowledge has been applied far beyond its context of emergence to explain human behaviour in general and to address a host of specific societal problems. In this article, we discuss the emerging research field of ‘neuropolitics’ that seeks to bring neuroscientific methods and findings to political science. Neuropolitics is investigated as a particular way of approaching political problems as located in the brain. We argue that neuropolitics research gives expression to a rationality of government that allows researchers to put forward policy prescriptions based on neuroscientific knowledge. Neuropolitics thus run the risk of leading to what we call a ‘pathologisation of politics’, that turns political problems into biological deviations.